Serial Publications In Large Libraries: Machine Applications

While many areas of library operations can be improved or even radically transformed by automation, the one area that probably stands to gain most, and needs the most help, is serials. It has been well known for ages that the irregularity and inconsistencies of serials can unhinge any librarian, but a new revelation of the automation age is the unhinged computer programmer. It is unfortunate that the irrationality of publishers of serials requires the best efforts of the librarian, the programmer, and the computer to bring some semblance of order to the publishers' bibliographical world. Since we cannot, however, unscramble the publishers, we will have to sacrifice librarians and programmers. There is not much that the librarian can do about erratically published journals, arbitrarily combined issues, whimsically numbered issues, or capricious title changes. Unfortunately, the computer cannot do much about these things either, but it can keep track of them and maintain order with a little less chaos than the humans have done. Perhaps someday all of the publishers will automate their processes, and then the millennium will have arrived at least for computer manufacturers. In the meantime, librarians and computer programmers working and communing in the joys of togetherness can do much to develop and to maintain a serials world slightly short of the millennium.published or submitted for publicatio